In 2006 a winter den of timber rattlesnakes in New Hampshire suffered a population crash. Then similar cases popped up in Massachusetts, then in Illinois. By 2009 a snake-killing fungus, Ophidiomyces ophidiodiicola (don’t ask me to pronounce it) had been identified and named.
Now up to 20 species of snakes are suffering from the fungus. Other fungal infections have killed millions of bats and millions of frogs. Some snakes do survive, but scientists are not sure if the infections will increase in intensity.
At this point some of you are probably thinking, well, who cares about snakes, or bats, or frogs. Or for that matter, canaries in coal mines.
I’ll leave you with a quote from naturalist John Muir, Sierra Club founder. “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”
For more info, see James Gorman, “A Spreading Fungus Can Be Deadly to Snakes,” New York Times, (26 Dec. 2017), p. D-3.
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